In praise of fallen leaves

A couple of years ago I was travelling in northern Norway at the peak of autumn. I vividly remember the long coach journey from Alta to Kautokeino through valleys with trees bathed in stunning colour. Yet within a few days of arriving in Kautokeino, all the leaves had dropped from the trees. I commented to a local woman what a shame it was that all the leaves had fallen. She looked at me and said, ‘I really love this time of year, though, because you get to see the contours of the landscape.’ And it was true. Without the leaves to obscure the view, you could see the true shape of the mountains and valleys as they stretched into the distance.

I was reflecting on that special moment the other day as I pondered our newly denuded garden. Having lots of amazing fruit trees is great in spring and summer, but it also means the fall of Autumn leaves is very dramatic and rather sad, not to mention hard work to clear up. It also suddenly reveals the houses that overlook our garden at the back, whose windows are obscured by the huge leaves of our towering fig tree during the summer months.

And yet … now we can see the beautiful fatsia in all its glory. At this time of year the fatsia is just coming into its own, and now, rather than being one of several leafy shrubs at the bottom of the garden, it is really standing out sharply, with its shiny dark leaves and extraordinary cream-coloured exotic flowers.

I can see that this notion of ‘seasonal reveal’ could work well in garden design. I could plant colourful winter flowers (such as cyclamen) behind shrubs that are striking and full-leaved in summer but fade to nothing in winter. We have a dwarf lilac in a large pot near the bottom of the garden. Rather than seeing an awkward twiggy thing in its pot, I could look through it instead and marvel at the colour behind it.

It is also much easier to see the garden wildlife when there are fewer leaves. The squirrels have been chasing each other up and down the long boughs of the fig tree and through the spaces between cherry and plum tree branches. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

In general, since taking on this garden after we moved in two years ago, I have been trying to introduce a lot more evergreen planting, including lots of climbers to cover the fences (such as ivy, honeysuckle, clematis, etc.). But focusing only on evergreens sometimes means missing out on a whole range of possible flowers, or a beautiful show of autumn leaves and – now I understand – the opportunity to change the very contours of the garden on a seasonal basis. The garden definitely looks barer now, but it’s also looking bigger and more open.

I could work with that …

Colour and cover return to the garden

Photo © T W Photos 2016
 

Our garden is exploding with colour - my impatience with our bulbs is finally being rewarded. After a lovely show of daffodils and narcissus, we now have some stunning tulips (fewer than I planted, but I think I’ll let the squirrel off this time). The blue dwarf hyacinths have provided a striking display this year, along with the bluebells. The primroses, which added vivid colour to the earlier months are fading, but their leaves still add an exotic air to the borders and the rockery, which is a bonus. The blossom on our pear and cherry trees was fleeting but beautiful, transforming our small garden at the canopy level.

I must say it’s also very good to see the leaves coming back to our trees now. It’s a joy to see the tiny bright green leaves appearing on the enormous fig tree at the bottom of the garden. These will eventually darken and expand, giving us back the privacy we lost over winter. While we have a wonderfully secluded garden in summer the fact that all the trees are deciduous means we are overlooked in winter by the house that backs onto us. This seems to be an HMO with several students, who spend a lot of time working by their windows – or hanging out of the windows with friends.

To address the challenge of privacy, I’ve been looking for some fast growing evergreen climbers for the back fence. I have been obsessively trawling through Alan Titchmarsh's excellent book on climbers and wall shrubs among other sources. It’s surprising how many climbers are not evergreen (and sometimes they don’t tell you, or write something frustrating like ‘semi-evergreen’ … what’s that?). It’s also interesting how you can sometimes find an evergreen variety (e.g. of honeysuckle) where other varieties drop their leaves – but you often have to read the blurb very carefully. I decided on two types of evergreen clematis that flower at different times and a bee-friendly ivy, which together will provide cover and interest for us and the local wildlife. I couldn’t find what I wanted at Homebase (surprisingly good a lot of the time) or local garden centres, so I have ordered some plants from RHS online. My first experience of ordering plants online, so I’m a little nervous …

On one side of the garden we have lost the beautiful jasmine because our neighbours are having an extension built and it was on their side. So I now have to think of a suitable climber to replace it. Perhaps something not so rampant as the jasmine, as the new length of the fence will be shorter. I was thinking about an evergreen honeysuckle – another bee-friendly plant. Further along the fence, I’d also like to try a Pyracantha Saphyr Orange. It looks like a good all rounder with lots of interest for our birds, too.

We will also have to replant the climbing rose that we had to dig out while the extension is being completed next door. The poor thing is covered with greenfly at the moment, so I've been looking online for bee-friendly bug spray or tips. There is a lot of advice online, from washing with soapy water, to shaking flour over the leaves, to encouraging ladybirds or even ordering some ladybird larvae online! It's apparently also a good idea to plant things like chives, garlic, petunias or mint alongside roses as aphids don't like these plants. Probably a good idea to keep the mint in a pot nearby as it can run riot if left unattended.

Our house is a typical Victorian L shape. At the side of the house (the bit our neighbours are extending on their side), there is a secluded, shady area where only pots will go (along with a small table and chair for reading). With the new extension this will now be a brick wall rather than a fence. It’s difficult to find climbers that are going to be happy in pots (though some jasmines are: our neighbours told us the old vastly sprawling jasmine was just growing out of a tiny pot). Anyway, I will start with my dear camellia - if it ever gets to flower again. Perhaps being closer to the house it will attract less interest from the squirrels.

Wildlife in the garden

Photo © T W Photos 2016

One of the most wonderful things about our garden is its wildlife. From the exotic yet commonplace ring-necked parakeets, to grey squirrels and foxes, to greenfinches, chaffinches, robins and blackbirds, collared doves, wrens and sparrows, it’s like an urban wildlife sanctuary.

Our North London Victorian terrace backs on to another long road of Victorian terraces. Gardens are approx. 40 ft long and many of them have mature trees. The result is a de facto nature reserve. The fact that many people’s fences are a bit dilapidated also helps create a ‘wildlife corridor’ effect – we frequently hear (and sometimes see) foxes in the garden; we haven’t seen a hedgehog yet.

We divide responsibilities pretty well in our household. My husband is extremely good at feeding the birds. We have a number of hanging feeders and he even built a bird table for the less acrobatic birds like our collared dove couple. He also regularly fills (and cleans) the bird bath. This is clearly much appreciated by the birds, who are often seen gulping the water or giving themselves a good old shower.

Planting more plants has definitely encouraged the birds, and our chaffinch family are often seen pottering around the primroses looking for food, along with robins and blackbirds. Blue tits and wrens enjoy hopping all over the beautiful jasmine that sprawls across a side fence. We recently saw a goldcrest there too.

Less welcome are feral pigeons – though they do hoover up any seeds that drop from the bird feeders. We have tried various tactics to deal with them, not least to appease the neighbour who complained about them sitting on his roof. We laid an enclosed gravel bed under the bird feeders to hamper movement. This has resulted in gladiator-like stand-offs between pigeons inside and outside of the new ‘arena’ and Benny-Hill style pigeon chases around it.

A man at the local garden centre suggested investing in a plastic sparrow hawk to deter the pigeons, but we haven’t quite got round to that. The best deterrent for a while was a local cat that left one of the pigeons with a bloody leg. We chased the cat away and harboured the pigeon in a box overnight with food and water. We were relieved that it was fine, but secretly pleased that the cat had scared them a bit. Still, they now seem to have forgotten that incident and have returned, though in smaller numbers.

Cats themselves are generally a bit of a nuisance as well, not only when they are ogling the birds, but also when they leave little gifts around the garden. We have tried a number of things –the Silent Roar, banana skins, etc. Possibly the best effect has been from the cat repeller rods, but we are not sure why. In any case we like to see them now and again, just to keep the pigeons on their toes.

We also get slugs in abundance. Before we replaced our old back door, we had a big problem with them getting under it and leaving silver dance trails across the kitchen floor. We have tried a lot of things to protect our garden from slugs. Being organic and generally humane gardeners we tried copper tape and wool pellets, with varying degrees of success. The internet offers lots more tips and advice. I’m almost looking forward to the slug season starting up again …

As I wrote last week, our squirrels love to eat crocus bulbs and they have probably eaten some of our tulip bulbs, as well as eating off the heads of our tulips before they have even matured. They have also launched frenzied attacks on our new camellia (something I realised was not unusual after checking online). One of them even took one of the camellia flowers and stuck it up a tree, something that baffled us for several hours until we saw the second attack.

Squirrels also hog the bird feeders and that can be annoying too. They are extraordinarily athletic and intelligent, though, and it’s fascinating to see them try to access the squirrel-proof feeders. One of the designs has a mechanism that closes off the seeds if someone over a certain weight tries to eat the seeds. One squirrel succeeded by hanging from the bird feeder support pole and pulling the feeder towards itself to avoid putting its weight on the feeder. (To be fair the RSPB does warn about that possibility …)

However, since the incident with the dwarf narcissus that I mentioned last week, we have seen much less of our squirrels, and not in groups of three, just isolated showings. This leads me to conclude (optimistically) that the shock of the toxic bulbs has put them off our garden for a while. I hope it is not anything more serious. In the meantime, though, the food in the bird feeders is certainly lasting longer than usual …

Cheering up a winter garden

February is an impatient month. Plants don’t visibly grow from day to day. The roses and the fuchsia are looking sorry for themselves and the pelargoniums are indoors. Bulbs that I planted last autumn are just starting to emerge tantalisingly from the soil. Every morning I rush out and see what has changed from the day before and the answer is ‘not much’.

Our garden has beautiful mature trees, but there was not much else there when we moved in a year and a half ago. What’s more the trees are mostly fruit trees, which is wonderful in spring and summer, but currently they have no leaves. The garden would look very stark at the moment if it wasn’t for the gorgeous fatsia in the bottom corner, a bushy cistus in a large pot, a lovely subtle pink hellebore, and my faithful hebes dotted around here and there.

So how to cheer up a February garden? The other day I was inspired by something that Alan Titchmarsh said on Classic FM. If you buy one flowering plant every month, you will be sure to always have something in bloom. What a lovely idea …

We already had one or two primroses in the garden and they appeared to be doing well in our soil and climate, though the pigeons often enjoy a good peck. Judging that these would probably be a safe bet I went along to our local Homebase five minutes’ walk away, and picked up some lovely blue and dark pink primroses for the bottom of the garden. So far so good. The blue ones are an extraordinary colour.

But I’m afraid I discovered that – like some people with the biscuit tin – buying just one set of primroses wasn’t going to be enough …

I decided it would be nice to get a few more bulbs, as Homebase had several that were already flowering and the ones in our garden were clearly going to take their time. So I bought some adorable little snowdrops, irises and crocuses. I planted some of the crocuses in the lawn, inspired by the carpets of crocuses I had seen when walking in St James’ Park the previous week.

The next day there was carnage. Squirrels always like a good scrabble around when I’ve planted something, but this was another level entirely. They had left the snowdrops and irises, but the crocuses were scattered to the four winds and the bulbs nowhere to be seen.

I quickly turned to google to find out more about squirrels and bulbs. There’s plenty of advice out there involving wire mesh and so on. But the best advice for me was to avoid the bulbs that squirrels particularly like and focus on the ones they don’t. Apparently they don’t like daffodils which taste bad as they have a toxin that would kill any squirrel stupid enough to carry on eating them. And apparently squirrels also turn up their noses at snowdrops.

So now I have a few snowdrops in the lawn and around the garden, and some dwarf narcissus under the trees. Gorgeous.

Except that yesterday some really foolhardy squirrel dug up a cluster of the dwarf narcissus ... I’m much more worried about the squirrel than the flowers, and hoping that he just spent a sleepless night with a stomach ache rather than anything worse.

Finally, I couldn’t help myself and decided to fill up some pots with spring flowers outside the double glass doors that look out on the garden from the kitchen. I bought some pink and yellow primroses, some extraordinary orange and yellow primulets with their subtle scent, and some highly scented pink and white hyacinths. Now we can look out onto a riot of colour that lifts the spirits first thing in the morning.

I feel like a bit of a cheat, buying ready made flowers rather than waiting for my bulbs, but I think these ones will last. And now I’m officially not going to buy any more flowers … for the rest of February at least.